>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Reply-To: "activist -- key" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: "actvist -- key" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Report from Sofia, Bulgaria
>Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 17:51:47 -0500
>
>Report from Sofia
>BULGARIAN ANTI-FASCISTS HOST TRIBUNAL ON NATO WAR CRIMES
>Sofia, Bulgaria, Oct. 2 and 3
>
>Two delegations from Yugoslavia traveled to this ancient Balkan capital
>in late September. Neither got much international media coverage, but
>for different reasons.
>
>On Sept. 27 leaders of the US-backed "Democratic Opposition of
>Serbia" met here quietly with representatives of the World Bank, the
>International Monetary Fund and NATO officials. They signed a "letter
>of intent" pledging that when they came to power they would raise
>prices, privatize state industry and dismantle Yugoslavia's free health
>care system. That was the price the US and other NATO powers
>demanded for the hundreds of millions of dollars they pumped into the
>campaign to overturn Yugoslavia's Socialist Party government and for
>the promised lifting of Western economic sanctions.
>
>Members of the other group had experienced a different form of
>Washington's largesse. They had lost children, parents, spouses and
>friends to the hail of NATO bombs and missiles that descended on
>Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999. They came to tell an international
>tribunal of the price the US and NATO imposed on Yugoslavs for not
>accepting the IMF's "economic restructuring" plan.
>
>Yugoslavia and Bulgaria have a lot in common. They are neighbors
>closely related by language, culture, history and topography. They both
>had socialist revolutions at the end of World War II. And over the past
>decade they have both been targets of US-directed wars of
>destruction. Against Yugoslavia that war was waged with bombs,
>missiles, CIA-backed terrorism and economic sanctions. In Bulgaria it
>took the form of IMF dictated "shock therapy" imposed by the same
>type of "democrats" the US now backs in Yugoslavia. In 1990 a similar
>US-funded movement grabbed power in Bulgaria after a campaign of
>"destabilization." Today the average Bulgarian lives on 58 cents a day.
>
>"For the past 10 years, life here has been a catastrophe," says Dr.
>Mimi Vitkova, who was Bulgaria's health minister from 1995 to 1997.
>"We were never a rich country, but when we had socialism our children
>were healthy and well-fed. They all got immunized. Retired people and
>the disabled were provided for and got free medicine. Our hospitals
>were free.
>
>"Today," she continues, "if a person has no money, they have no right
>to be cured. And most people have no money. Our economy was
>ruined. We had a lot of industry, but after privatization many plants
>shut down. We lost our trade with the Soviet Union, with Africa, Latin
>America and, of course, Yugoslavia. Officially unemployment here is 17
>percent, but in many parts of the country it is 35 percent or more. At
>least 1 million of our most educated people have emigrated abroad.
>We were promised if we 'privatized' we would get access to West
>European markets, but it never happened. Instead we get are tiny
>loans from the International Monetary Fund."
>
>Dr. Vitkova is a member of the Bulgarian Antifascist Union, originally
>formed by partisans who fought the Nazis and their collaborators
>during World War II. While Bulgaria's monarchy sent troops to aid the
>Axis in Yugoslavia and Greece, Bulgarian revolutionaries fought
>alongside Yugoslav partisans against Hitler's troops.
>
>"Our organization is made up of people who swore to never allow
>fascism to return," Vitkova said of the union. "Bulgaria was one of the
>the few countries where all Nazi collaborators were punished. But
>today the pro-NATO regime is trying to clean up history, saying that
>Bulgaria never had fascism. Our main activities are educational, but
>they are not only excursions into the past. We may face the same
>forces in the future. Our people will not submit to the economic
>dictatorship that now rules our country."
>
>On Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, the Antifascist Union hosted the fifth hearing of
>the East Europe?based International People's Tribunal on NATO War
>Crimes in Yugoslavia. Previous hearings had been held in Russia,
>Ukraine, Germany and Yugoslavia itself. The tribunal cooperates with
>the Commission of inquiry on NATO War Crimes headed by former US
>attorney general Ramsey Clark. Judges from Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine,
>Georgia, Poland, Burkina Faso, Germany and the United States heard
>wrenching testimony from Yugoslav victims of NATO's bombing
>campaign. The hearing was opened by Antifascist Union president
>Vladimir Velkanov and tribunal president Mikhail Kuznetzov of Russia.
>The US antiwar movement was represented by Bill Doares and Lara
>Kretskaya of the International Action Center and the US Commision of
>Inquiry.
>
>"NATO took everything from me," Olivera Simic of Novi Pazar told the
>judges. She described how her husband had gone with their 2-year-old
>son to buy parts for their car on May 31, 1999. That was the day
>generals at the Pentagon decided to destroy the center of Novi Pazar.
>Simic, pregnant, stayed home. She only heard the explosion that
>demolished the city's central department store, killing her husband, son
>and nine other people.
>
>Elitza Yovanovic was at home on April 5, 1999, the day the US Air
>Force bombed the town of Aleksinac. "Aleksinac was my Hiroshima,"
>she says. She was not in the house when the missiles hit, but her aunt
>and uncle, her husband's parents and most of her friends died that day.
>She tried to dig her aunt out of the rubble but it was too late. Her
>mother, a doctor, was wounded and died a few months later.
>Yovanovic's 6-year-old daughter survived the bombing but still asks
>when her left leg will grow back.
>
>Branko Brudaro recalled how he and his wife had decided to send their
>9-year-old daughter to stay with his in-laws in rural Montenegro, far
>from any roads or military or industrial targets. They could not escape
>the Pentagon reach. On April 13, Brudaro's daughter, his wife's sister
>and her daughter were killed by NATO bombs.
>
>Milos Markovic is a journalist in the cultural section of Serbian
>television. He was working late the night of April 23 when US missiles
>destroyed the TV station. "We stumbled outside through smoke and fire
>only to see our colleagues' heads and arms lying on top of cars and in
>the streets." Markovic noted that Western correspondents often worked
>overnight at Serbian TV facilities but none were there the night the
>missile hit.
>
>Stoyanc Petrovic's grandson was killed in the bombing. He himself was
>hospitalized with a fractured leg when NATO missiles hit the hospital.
>20 patients and medical workers died.
>
>A representative of Iraq told of the 9 years of destruction inflicted on
>his country by US-directed war and sanctions, which have taken the
>lives of hundreds of thousands of children.
>
>The tribunal also heard testimony about the murder and persecution of
>Serbs, Romas, Gorans, Turks and other minorities in Kosovo inthe 13
>months of NATO-KFOR occupation. The judges unanimously found the
>leaders and military commanders of NATO guilty of war crimes against
>the people of Yugoslavia. The final verdict called for the abolition of
>NATO as a "criminal organization," an end to the occupation of Kosovo
>and for reparations to the Yugoslav people from the NATO powers.
>IAC representative Doares closed the tribunal with a denunciation of US-
>NATO interference in the Yugoslav elections, which he called a
>"continuation of the war." He compared the IMF's destruction of the
>Bulgarian economy to the devastation of Yugoslavia by NATO bombs
>and missiles and drew applause when he called NATO and the IMF
>"two arms of the same monster."
>
>Judges from other East European and former Soviet republics were
>familiar with the role of NATO and the IMF. One of them was
>Pantaleymun Georgadze, general secretary of the Communist party of
>the former Soviet republic of Georgia. He told IAC representatives that
>while most Georgians now live on the edge of starvation, the US-
>backed Shevardnadze wants turn Georgia into a NATO base. "They
>want to make the Caucasus a zone of war like the Balkans," he said.
>Georgadze's son, once the republic's minister of security, has been
>froced into hiding for opposing the Shevardnadze regime.
>Representatives from Ukraine told how the NATO-backed "democratic"
>regime in their country has also destroyed their country's industry while
>dragging Ukraine into NATO's "Partnership for Peace." NATO held
>maneuvers in Ukraine last summer.
>
>Among the Bulgarians attending the hearing was Blagovesta Doncheva,
>a former schoolteacher who was once an anticommunist "dissident.
>Now an anti-NATO activist, she was arrested for protesting Clinton's
>visit to Bulgaria in 1999. She was deeply concerned about Western
>intervention in the Yugoslav elections. "They did exactly the same thing
>in 10 years ago in Bulgaria," Doncheva says. "The Bulgarian 'Union of
>Democratic Forces' was flooded with money, cars, trucks, computers
>from the CIA and the Soros Foundation. They made big promises, and
>we believed them. Then the IMF and World Bank destroyed the very
>fabric of our society. Our industry was shut down, our pensions were
>taken away. Earlier women could retire at 55 and men at 60; now no
>one can retire. Our seniors are eating out of garbage bins, children
>are dying in the streets from drugs and malnutrition. The last 10 years
>have been the most awful of my life. For us, stopping NATO and the
>IMF is a matter of survival."
>
>International Action Center
>39 West 14th Street, Room 206
>New York, NY 10011
>email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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